Manager Memo podcast · Len Samborowski, MBA Associate Professor, Nichols College

Designing a Life You're Not Trying to Escape From

·44 min·2 clips

He says clarity starts by naming “what is enough” before a family builds a will or trust.

Jermaine E. joins Len from Pasadena. Len opens by noting the weather, then moves straight into Jermaine's path. The conversation starts with a quick look at the many industries Jermaine has worked in. Toy making gets the first round of attention because Len wants to know how that began. Jermaine comes across as someone who has carried executive responsibility across a lot of very different worlds. This is not a clean career ladder. It is a mix of experiences that keep circling back to work, purpose, and what people leave behind. Jermaine explains that he is now building Airlight. Airlight is a straightforward willmaker designed to help people turn difficult money and legacy conversations into legally binding documents. From there, the interview opens up into his upbringing. He says he grew up in a Buddhist household. He describes parents who were always giving and volunteering. That background shows up again in the way he talks about service. Len asks about a student job Jermaine once took at Pasadena City College. The job paid well enough to matter, but its real value was in the service it required. Jermaine used it to go into local high schools and help underserved students learn how to apply for financial aid. That work seems to have given him a clearer sense of what his voice could do. The conversation also turns to his son. Jermaine gave him a graduation gift that was really a challenge. He offered to send him anywhere in the world, round trip, if he would volunteer for a stranger. The son chose Warsaw in 2022 and worked in a refugee center. At first he struggled with the language, the food, the machines, and the basic rhythm of daily life. He wanted to come home early. Jermaine and his mother talked him through it one day at a time. He stayed for three months. He helped fundraise for the refugee center. More than that, he came away with a deeper confidence in his own ability to figure things out. Jermaine treats that as proof that travel can build more than memories. It can build steadiness. Len keeps pressing on the same idea from different angles. He wants to know how a person becomes the kind of leader who gives away opportunities instead of hoarding them. Jermaine's answer keeps coming back to family, exposure, and practical acts of service. The episode stays loose and conversational rather than tightly segmented. It moves by story, not by outline. That gives it a lived-in feel. The result is an interview about business that keeps widening into a conversation about responsibility. It ends with Airlight still in view, but with the larger point intact: work matters most when it helps people face hard truths with a little more confidence.

As heard by us

A business conversation about work, service, and the confidence that comes from helping others.

Manager Memo treats Jermaine E. as a conversation about work, service, and what people leave behind. It moves from toy making to ed tech, political finance, executive talent search, freight logistics, and Airlight, his willmaker, while returning to the idea that confidence can…

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Press play if you want a business story that ties money, service, and legacy together.

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